Quick Fixes for Windows-Part 2

Moving on, we shall see the second part today. Let’s find solution for the following problems.

Vista Saves data but doesn’t recover.

Quick Fix: Vista’s Enterprise, Business Editions come with Shadow copies which let to recover file’s older version. Vista’s Home Basic and Home Premium do not have this feature but saves data, wasting disk space. To stop this waste, put all the documents on a drive other than Windows disk. Now click start and then click SystemPropertiesProtection, and then press Enter. You may see a list of disks, see for the disk that contains personal data and uncheck it. Then turn off System Protection. When you are done, click OK to close System Properties. One thing to be remembered here is that when you have data on a separate partition it will speed up backups by allowing copying files rather than programs.

Trojan horse or other malware must not be able to take over the computer, but logging in as a standard user can also be restrictive

Quick Fix: By logging in as an administrator, applications can be launched with limited privileges. Follow the points closely. Download Microsoft’s free PsTools Utility collection. After completion, unzip the downloaded contents and store it in a folder. Now you have to move that folder to a place where you usually store your applications. The tools downloaded contain a tool called PsExec.

Now to create a shortcut that opens Internet Explorer 7 you have to right-drag its shortcut to a new location. Choose copy here. Now right click the copied shortcut and then select Properties. With shortcut tab active, try clicking the beginning of the Target box and type the path to PsExec before the command line. Type space followed by a hyphen, a letter 1, again space, a hyphen, then letter d ( -1 –d)

Type another space. The ‘-l’ switch will reduce the program privilege, while the ‘-d’ switch will cause the command-prompt window to close once the application is launched. Once the process is done, you should see the text in target box like this, “C:\Program Files\PsTools\ psexec.exe” -l -d “C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe” or depending on your path. Now click Change Icon, then OK. Keep specifying the path to the original file and click OK till all dialog boxes close.

Repeat these steps whenever you need the shortcut to run with few privileges.

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December 3, 2007 | Filed Under Software, Tips n Tricks